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Home truths about Ralegh and Spenser: Sir Thomas Norris and the rebuilding of Mallow Castle

by Tadhg O’Keeffe

Revisiting the issue of New English architecture, archaeologist Tadhg O’Keeffe urges us to reconsider Spenser’s situation in Kilcolman: isolated, vulnerable, and inhabiting a medieval castle whose very contours bespoke an alien architectural vocabulary and an entirely different set of social affordances. O’Keeffe builds on his important work challenging the identification of Myrtle Grove as Ralegh’s house in Youghal, but that town remains key to the plantation context for Spenser as well as Ralegh, and it is most likely that if the two colonists had any sustained contact, it was there. Bringing Kilcolman into dialogue with a possible set of plantation architectural models realised in whole or in part by Thomas Norris at Mallow and Walter Ralegh at Sherborne, and perhaps even discussed and exchanged at Youghal, this essay manages to generate a fresh perspective on Spenser in Ireland, and (of more interest in recent years, thanks to the MACMORRIS and ‘Centering Spenser’ projects), Spenser in Munster. Read more…